September 2020
Bio Note: I am a new Verse-Virtual member who currently serves as the Mat-Su Vice President
of the Alaska Writers Guild. I am also a poet, teacher and "former" journalist with an undergraduate degree
in English and Japanese Studies. My work has recently been published in Alaska Women Speak and
Make-A-Scene magazine, and I am an active participant in Rattle's open mic shows on YouTube.
I have also published several books through my own publishing company, Red Sweater Press.
The One Where the Hero Dies
In the movies, we’re supposed to be satisfied
when the mortally wounded protagonist
achieves something in death — the sacrifice
that saves thousands, the personal growth
that could only have come from such a trial,
maybe even one last kiss with the love interest.
Sometimes we can exit the theater
at the end of our fatal cinematic experience
with the words, “it was a good movie,”
glued to our lips. But if those characters
were real enough to mean something to us,
remind us of our own losses, the weight
lingers, and we hold out hope
for significance in our pain, solace
in our moving on. Is it any wonder
we find attachment in creation?
This is how it ends:
with the determination to be a better person
for the death to count for something
and the resolution to recreate that bond ourselves,
make someone else feel what we felt,
with the subtlety to avoid that coffin-nail criticism,
it was simply derivative.
©2020 Caitlin M.S. Buxbaum
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the
author (email address above) to tell him or her. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is the beginning of community at Verse Virtual.
It is very important. -FF